TL;DR: The bottom of this post has some nice, high-res versions of this PC GAME logo in different variations for you to download

When a game's marketing material needs to indicate that it's for console or mobile, it's an easy process. Each platform has a single basic logo that is instantly recognisable and crystal clear in its intentions. Sure, there's some variation here and there (eg. displaying the PS4 logo without its PS icon, or using Android's green robot instead of the Google Play button), but those variations tend to add flexibility rather than complication.

On the other hand, the PC, despite being the world's largest, most powerful, and most complete gaming platform, doesn't have this convenience. No doubt this is a side effect of the versatility and relative brand autonomy that PC gaming enjoys.

When you want to slap on a logo on your game poster, box, or trailer indicating that your game will be out on PC, you have about as many options as the other platforms combined....and most of those options have problems.

The Windows 10 logo (top left) has two problems. Firstly, it's ugly as sin. But more importantly, it can carry connotations of Microsoft's Windows 10 app store, which a separate, closed marketplace that has little to do with PC gaming proper. While other Windows logos (eg. the Windows 7 logo - top centre) don't have this connotation, they do scream "outdated", and users could infer that your game isn't compatible with newer versions of Windows. This problem will eventually occur with the Windows 10 logo too.

Then there are "Games for Windows" type logos, which make sense - but those are reminiscent of the Games For Windows Live service, and the last thing you want to do is traumatise potential customers.

Many devs simply use the Steam logo, since that's virtually synonymous with PC games for many people. This certainly makes sense in some situations, but has problems in others. Obviously, it excludes other storefronts like GOG (or perhaps a Humble Widget on your game's own website). It's also problematic for games in development which haven't gone through the Greenlight process yet. Stating that your game will be on a platform that hasn't officially accepted it yet is basically false advertising, no matter how unlikely it is that your game will fail to be Greenlit (going by the average quality of Steam New Releases nowadays, it's pretty unlikely).

​Some more broad and generic PC game logos tend to carry a "CD rom" or "DVD rom" tag, which is logical (though still unnecessary) on a physical boxed copy of your game, but makes little sense anywhere else.

The logo on the bottom right is about as close as we've come to a logo that is both generic and widely recognised. This is certainly an adequate option in terms of clear messaging. But it's pretty ugly. Those clunky, octagonal letters crammed into a too-small box look like something designed by a programmer from the 386 era, rather than a contemporary graphic design. To my eyes, this logo placed next to a slick and modern logo like the Xbox One logo would send the message that the PC version is archaic and technically inferior, when the opposite is likely to be true. But I'm a PC Master Race kind of guy, so maybe that's just me being too precious.

The best PC logo I've seen comes from Fallout 4. There's nothing magical about it - it's a very simple typographical logo featuring a square, a line, and a fairly generic font. But there's an elegance to it. It looks strong and clean. Unlike the 'octagonal' one above, it breathes, and its negative space forms pleasant, nicely balanced shapes, not ugly and jarring ones.

So, this is the one! In lieu of better options, I've officially declared this my personal choice for Official PC Game logo. ;) The fact that it comes from Bethesda (whose games are always 100 times better on PC, due to their incredible modding capability, and the ability for those mods to push the hardware) is just icing on the cake.

So I've recreated a high res version of the logo, with a few minor tweaks for clarity. Here it is on a poster of my game Spryke.

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿Below are two raster versions of the logo you can use on your own games. Or download the zip, which contains 4 high res variants, as well as a PSD containing vector versions.

But wait, isn't this infringing on Bethesda's copyright?

Uh, I guess you could say that technically it is. And if Bethesda ask me to take these down, I will. But honestly I'd be shocked, and a little dismayed, if that happened. The logo has nothing to do with any of their IP, and other people using it on other games would in no way constitute bad faith towards Bethesda. I can't see how it would benefit them in any way to not want others to use it, and - though I might be wrong - I don't believe they would care.

In a previous post, I argued that real PC gamers use game pads. Why? Because power and versatility are what being part of the Glorious PC Master Race™ is all about.

A smart PC gamer knows to utilise the versatility of the PC by tweaking graphics settings, choosing her own hardware combination, using mods.....and yes, by using whichever control peripheral is best for the job at hand.

I own 7 types of control peripherals, and I use all of them for gaming, depending on what game they're best suited to. Below is an overview of each type, with a breakdown of the pros and cons of each.

Naturally, this topic involves a lot of personal preference and subjectivity, though I've tried to be as objective as I could. Also keep in mind that the list of peripherals isn't exhaustive (I don't cover flight sticks, motion controllers or the Steam Controller), as I've chosen to only talk about those that I know well.

No such thing as the perfect peripheral

Let's get one thing clear from the outset. Anyone who tells you that kb+m/gamepad/headwand is the One True Way to play games is experiencing a lack of imagination, nothing more.

The perfect gaming peripheral simply hasn't been invented yet. All the existing ones are flawed one way or another. Sure, you'll get by just fine in almost all games with just one peripheral. But if you want the best possible gaming experience (and as PC gamers, that's often what we strive for), you'll want to minimise those flaws by knowing when to match peripheral X with game Y.

Of course, not everyone owns 7 peripherals, and not everyone wants to. In general, you can get an optimal experience in 90% of games by investing in a good keypad, power mouse, and gamepad. If you don't need "optimal" and just want "good", then drop the keypad and power mouse, and just purchase a gamepad to go with your regular keyboard and mouse.

It's curious that after millions of years of dominating the physical world through his mastery of tools, man now interacts with the modern world using a device that doesn't even take advantage of his opposable thumbs.

Rules of Thumb

I explore each peripheral in depth below. But here's a chart that roughly outlines some good rules of thumb. Yes, there will be exceptions, and personal preference will always factor to some degree.

Keyboard - Quantity over Quality

As the most no-nonsense peripheral with by far the most inputs, the keyboard is ostensibly the PC's trump card. But it's not that simple. Its inputs are simplistic and binary (a keypress can either be fully activated or fully unactivated - nothing in between). Ultimately, the keyboard uniquely excels in some games, and uniquely sucks in others.

In most cases, however, there are better options. I almost never use my regular keyboard for gaming any more.

What it's not so great at

The keyboard's binary input makes it a poor choice for games that require delicate, nuanced control, such as racing games: you can't feather the brake, accelerator, or steering. There are techniques in many racing games that are literally impossible to achieve using a keyboard.

Imagine getting into a car with a lunatic who did only three actions: slam the brakes, floor the accelerator, do jolting turns. It'd be a terrible ride, right? For the same reason, once you play a racing game with a wheel (or even just a gamepad) you'll never go back to a keyboard.

Splinter Cell - keyboard edition

Keyboards are also a poor choice for stealth games games (which is ironic, since the genre was arguably born on PC at a time when PC gamepads were rare). Sneaking and tentatively peering around corners is a job that requires precision and grace. But doing it with the keyboard's four-directional STOP...GO...STOP...GO... mechanics makes you move basically like Pacman...not very sneaky, really.

In a first-person shooter, the WASD limitation of 4 directions (or 8, if you press keys together) isn't a big deal. This is partly because precision of aiming in an FPS is more important than precision of movement. AnFPS might make you shoot tiny moving targets in the distance, but it'll rarely require you to move through anything narrower than a barn door.

The other reason keyboards are ok in shooters is because they're anchored to the mouse (the A key moves you west, but swivel your mouse 45 degrees and the A key now moves you northwest). In other words, the keyboard's clunky controls do ok in a FPS, because they use the mouse's superior precision as a crutch.

When you remove the mouse from the equation altogether, such as in a Platform game, the experience quickly becomes clunky. In theory, a keyboard should be perfectly suited to a platformer. After all, most don't use analogue movement (though my own Spryke does), and most require just a few keys: 4 directional movement, jump, and maybe shoot. Yet many people find that platformers on a gamepad just feel more fun and more precise. Perhaps it's something to do with the somewhat stiff feeling of playing with both hands on the keyboard at once.

WASD becomes a particular problem in games where precision of movement and precision of aiming are independent and of equal importance, such as Twin Stick Shooters like Renegade Ops or Waves. Once the mouse can no longer hold the keyboard's hand, the clunkiness of WASD is exposed.

A distant cousin of the twin-stick shooter is the 3D fighting game. Series like Darksiders, BatmanArkham, and DevilMay Cry utilise a twin-stick-shooter approach to their combat, frequently requiring you to move in one direction while throwing a projectile in a totally unrelated direction. When you're trying to do this while surrounded by 15 enemies, the coarseness of 8-way movement just doesn't cut it.

Now we come to 3rd person open-world games. The ones that revolve around fighting and/or stealth (eg. Darksiders, Assassins' Creed) are clearly better suited to gamepads. As are the ones that revolve around cars (eg. Test Drive 2 Unlimited). But then you have tricky beasts like the GTA games, where you have cars (way better with a gamepad) and shooting (way better with kb&m).

Honestly, the best peripheral for GTA is one that hasn't been invented yet (maybe Valve's Steam Controller takes us a step closer?....dunno...haven't tried it yet). For now - if the game lets you - consider playing GTA with a gamepad (or wheel), but switching to kb&m for the shooting bits.

What it excels at

The keyboard's abundance of keys makes it the obvious choice for games with tons of commands and hotkeys, like strategy games or role-playing games.

It's also a natural fit for first-person shooters. Though this is less to do with the keyboard's inherent strengths, and more to do with the fact that it enables the use of a mouse.

Things to look out for

While the keyboard might not be great for most games, some gaming keyboards have 'value added' features that make them indispensible gaming accessories anyway: media buttons, volume control, macro keys, and so on.

But my absolute favourite keyboard feature is the LCD panel found on keyboards such as the Logitech G510s. Ever since I first used a keyboard with one of these in 2009, the LCD panel has become my #1 prerequisite feature when choosing a keyboard. If you're a huge big massive PC gaming nerd like me, then it'll probably be up your alley too.

​The marketing for these LCD panels usually focuses on the in-game stats that can be displayed here (surprisingly many games provide native support for Logitech LCD panels). But I've yet to find a game where this is actually useful.

The true beauty of these LCDs reveals itself when you pair them with the incredible AIDA64 to display your hardware stats. AIDA64 lets you display just about any info about your PC that you can imagine, and lay it out any way you wish.

With the right customisation, a keyboard's LCD panel is an Overclocker's or PC enthusiast's dream. They're also useful for people who simply want to see their framerates without ugly blocky numbers messing up their game (FRAPS has native support for Logitech LCDs).

I adore my Logitech G510s, even though I almost never use its keys for actual gaming. I'm regularly consulting the LCD for hardware stats, and finely adjusting my system volume is a pleasure with its smoothly rolling volume bar. I've also programmed its macro keys to do things like open/close Steam Overlay, instantly switch from headphones to speakers, or to toggle 3Dvision on and off.

The LCD panel on my Logitech G510s keyboard showing a custom display I put together using AIDA64. It shows me all the real-time PC stats I might want to know while gaming or working: CPU core usage, temps, RAM, VRAM, GPU usage, Download/Upload bandwidth, monitor info, and game framerate. If I press a button I get a second display (not pictured) that shows me an animated FRAPS line chart, GPU overclocking frequencies and fan speeds.

Gaming keypad - The keyboard's smarter little brother

The Razer Orbweaver. Sadly, that's not an analogue joystick at the thumb area. It's more like a gamepad's D-pad that you can map to 4 separate keystrokes. (You can actually map it to 8, though you're in for a world of frustrating mis-presses if you do that)

Keyboards were never designed for gaming, and it's only through a combination of necessity and fortitude that they often do a decent job. So it was inevitable that someone would adapt the keyboard into a device that actually is designed for gaming. Enter the Gaming Keypad.

The gaming keypad's design considers the unique way that gamers use keyboards: it's built specifically for your left hand, and it typically angles the ZXCV keys to make them easier for your fingers to reach without leaving the WASD area. It provides the most-used keys, and optimises their layout for gaming (you don't use CAPS LOCK more than the W or E keys, so why should it be so huge?)

A good gaming keypad also treats you like a highly evolved primate, and actually gives your opposable thumb some useful things to do. On a regular keyboard, your thumb is really only used for two keys (SPACE and ALT). A keypad such as the Orbweaver lets it comfortably command six.

Frankly, gaming keypads can also be better for your health. Regular keyboards - especially if you're right-handed - force your hands away from the torso and into an unergonomic position that places stress on the neck and back. (I know from personal experience how expensive osteopath appointments can get after too many hours spent in this position!) A small gaming keypad can be placed right next to your mouse for a symmetrical position that is closer to the body and ultimately more comfortable.

What it's not so great at

The gaming keypads' main disadvantage is its limited number of keys. So it mightn't be the best choice for strategy games or complex RPGs that have loads of hotkeys. Though most Action RPGs will benefit from the quicker reaction time all those close-proximity keys afford you.

To combat the lower number of keys, most keypads come with a multi-keyset feature that let you multiply the number of available keys by switching between several different profiles on the fly. I personally find this too fiddly to be worthwhile. If you're playing a sprawling strategy game that uses a ton of hotkeys, you might want to use a regular keyboard. Or try combining a keypad with a power mouse.

What it excels at

Where a regular keyboard is about quantity, a gaming keypad is about quality. It has fewer keys in total, but they're better laid out, and more of them are within easy reach.

So, just about any game that plays well with a keyboard (and doesn't have an enormous amount of hotkeys) will play even better with a gaming keypad: first-person shooter, roleplaying games, strategy games. Your fingers will be faster, you'll waste less time looking down, and you'll be more comfortable. You'll likely even find yourself more immersed in the game.

Gaming keypads are also very customisable, usually offering macros and full key remapping. The latter is useful for games that have certain commands hardcoded and/or disallow certain keys to be mapped (a game prevents you from changing the map key from M to TAB? No problem, just configure the keypad to pretend that its TAB key is M).

It also must be mentioned that keypads can unfortunately cause occasional annoyances or glitches. For example, Windows' Device Manager sometimes treats Razer keypads like gamepads, which can cause xbox gamepads to not work in some games until the keypad is unplugged.

Also, the Razer models are dependent on a somewhat intrusive program called Razer Synapse. The core program is good, and using it to configure hotkeys and macros is a breeze, but its insistence on syncing to the cloud and frequent update notification popups get annoying for what should be a near-invisible little utility.

Mouse - When she's good, she's very very good

Not much needs to be said about the mouse. It's really, really good at what it does: pointing at stuff. Whether you're pointing a cursor in a strategy game or a gun in a first-person shooter, the mouse is unparalleled. Which is why those genres remain mainstays of the PC gaming world.

The mouse's great advantage comes from its ability to cater equally well to a wide variety of movements, from slow and creeping, to jutting and angular. This incredibly precise movement is no doubt enabled by the fact that the mouse engages the fine motor skills in more of your muscles than most other peripherals do.

A keyboard key is pressed by a single finger moving more or less like a simple piston: up and down. The movement of your thumb on a gamepad's thumbstick is barely more sophisitcated. Yet when you operate a mouse, your movement can incorporate a complex network of movements (clenching, pressing, twisting, pulling, sliding...) from just about every muscle from your shoulder and elbow, through your wrist and into the fingertips of all five fingers.

​What it's not so great at

For all its precision, there's plenty that a mouse is hopeless at. Since a mouse's speed is virtually unlimited (you can move it as slowly or as fast as your arm will allow), it's a poor fit for the type of movement that should be restricted, such as that of a walk, run, or a steering wheel. Which is why most racing games won't even let you use it (those that do, such as the Borderlands games, produce questionable results), and why most games in general will let you control a character's direction with the mouse, but leave the actual movement to the keyboard.

What to look out for

Choosing a mouse is a highly personal decision. Much will depend on the shape of your hand, and the way you hold it. My advice is to ignore the marketing mumbo jumbo and concentrate on three areas: wired, comfort, and buttons.

Wired

I've tried several wireless mice over the years. No matter the brand or PC setup, I've always ended up disappointed. Some had cripplingly short wireless ranges, while others had a habit of conflicting with other wireless devices in the room. The cursors with those that worked without major problems were still noticeably jitterier than with a wired mouse. I've learnt my lesson, and I always stick to wired mice now.

Comfort

This is the most subjective area, and nothing can replace trying out a mouse in your own hand. But I'll give the best advice I can. For the record, my hands are slender, but with longer-than-average fingers.

The three main grip types are "claw", "tip", and "palm". Most people, including me, use a "palm" grip: a large area of your palm makes contact with the butt of the mouse, while your fingers and thumb gently rest on (as opposed to tightly clamp) either side.

In my experience, the best mouse for a "palm" grip needs to be:

​Asymmetrically shaped (see picture below). This is a must. Once you feel your hand snugly fitting into an ergonomically designed mouse, you'll never go back to a symmetrical (ie. unergonomic) one.

Have a butt/arch that protrudes generously both upwards and backwards, to really give your palm something to wrap itself around.

Fairly large (though of course this will depend on your hand shape and size). Smaller mice tend to encourage the "claw" grip, which I find less comfortable.

Notice the asymmetrical shape of this Roccat Tyon. This makes it much more comfortable to hold, since it better fits the natural angle of your hand.

Buttons

Unless it happens to be 1987 where you live, you should get a mouse with at least 5 buttons. Buttons #4 and #5 are super useful as "back" and "forward" in browsers and Windows Explorer. And when gaming, it's handy to map them to actions such as "melee", "throw grenade", or "open inventory".

Though if you want to get the absolute best experience, you might want to consider the.....

Power Mouse Swiss army knife

A mouse with 15 buttons generally looks pretty silly when you first see one. But after you use one of these (I'm calling it a "power mouse" for lack of a better term) for a day or two, you quickly see the sense in it.

Many games use way more keys than you can comfortably reach with your left hand without taking it off WASD. Here are just a few of the more common ones: J for journal, M for map, Z for prone, F5 for quicksave, I for inventory, ESC for closing a dialog, 1-9 for weapons or hot items, HOME for centre camera, PrntScrn for screenshots.

With a Power Mouse, you can map actions like these to buttons that are always within easy reach. This not only gives you better reaction time in games, but it can also increase immersion by reducing the distraction and tediousness of looking down at the keyboard every time you want to find M for map.

I've even found that by removing this friction, using a power mouse can even change how I play a game. For example, I might find myself switching items from the inventory more, or using a wider combination of weapons and powers.

The benefits of a power mouse go far beyond gaming, too. The next time you're working in this or that software program, take a note of which keys you press over and over. I personally found that when I'm working on my game development in Photoshop, Toon Boom Harmony or Clickteam Fusion, I'm pressing ENTER, ESC, and DEL hundreds of times a day - and none of those keys are particularly close to where my hands usually rest!

I've since mapped ENTER, ESC, DEL to mouse buttons, and the reduction of friction in my workflow has been palpable. I highly recommend it!

Things to look out for

Choosing a Power Mouse should rely on much the same criteria as choosing a regular mouse: make sure it's wired, and make sure it's super comfortable. Though there are a few more: placement, customisability and software.

Placement

The more buttons the better, though make sure they're placed intelligently. You don't want 10 buttons all clustered around the thumb, because you'll have trouble memorising them and finding them in the heat of the moment. Rather, look for a mouse that has scattered various buttons across strategic spots: a couple at the front, a couple for the thumb, a couple on the other side for the pinky, and so on. By far the best mouse in this regard (and most regards, actually) that I've personally used is the Roccat Tyon.

Customisability & Software

Mice with 5 or fewer buttons generally work out of the box in almost every game and program. Power mice with 6 or more will generally require a utility that lets you map them to keyboard keys. These utilities can vary in quality, with some being more full-featured than others (again, the Roccat stands out in my experience).

If the software that comes with your mouse is somewhat barebones, gaps in functionality can sometimes be filled by using a free 3rd party utility called xmouse. Xmouse gives you a lot of control over your mouse, including several different methods of simulating a keystroke. This is important, and can make the difference between something working or not. For example, you'd want:

a grenade button to only activate once when you press it

the fire button for an automatic weapon to activate repeatedly until you release it

the crouch button to activate once but indefinitely until you release it

When researching Power Mice, be careful to note which buttons are actually mappable. Sometimes a mouse might be advertised as having 10 buttons, but then you learn that the really useful looking button at the front can't be used for anything other than changing DPI, and that the nice little button right by the thumb is locked to a "sniper mode" feature.

So there's a lot to consider. Or not.......just get the Roccat Tyon. It's awesome.

Gamepad - I once was blind, but now I see

It took me 20 years to realise how good gamepads were (really: I was a diehard kb+m gamer since 1991, and bought my first ever gamepad in 2011).

I think a major reason so many PC gamers don't realise the benefit of gamepads (apart from mere snootiness and habituation) is that we tend to remember that time we played Halo at a friend's house and were dumbfounded by how bad the controls were. Or we try to imagine how you might even begin to play StarCraft 2 with a gamepad, then give up and weep instead. But the truth is that there are just as many genres where the gamepad outperforms the kb+m.

Unlike kb+m gaming, the gamepad takes a little time to get used to. If you're like I was, it'll take a good few weeks to get used to the tiny movement of the thumbsticks. But once you get the hang of it, a whole bunch of games suddenly become more enjoyable than they ever were before.

What it's not so great at

The gamepad's major weakness is its poor aiming ability. Some 35 muscles control the hand, while only about 4 control the thumb. So it's no surprise that aiming with a tiny thumbstick is so much worse than with a mouse. The hugely successful console franchises Gears of War and Halo prove that people can get used to it if they have to. But just because others are willing to put up with any old shit doesn't mean you should. You're a PC gamer, after all.

So gamepads are a big no-no for first-person shooters ﻿and ﻿third-person shooters. They're also pretty lousy with most strategy games, including real-time-strategy, turn-based strategy, and tower defense games. Those games frequently require you to click all over the place, and this becomes tedious with a joystick that has a very low top-speed, compared to a mouse that can flit across the whole screen in an instant.

The gamepad's limited number of buttons can also be an issue. Most gamepads have about 15 buttons, depending how you count them, which is not enough for most strategy games or many role-playing games.

What it excels at

As already discussed, the gamepad's dual joysticks make it well suited to twin-stick shooters, 3D fighting games, and many 3rd person open-world games.

But the gamepad's big strength is analogue controls that let you use physical pressure to activate a trigger or joystick a little, a bit more, or a lot, depending on your need. This makes them great forracing games (though wheels are of course better), and stealth games, where they let you delicately transition from a slow crawl to a brisk trot as you navigate the shadows.

There's also a lot to be said for the physical form of the gamepad. After all, it's the only device on this list that was designed for gaming from the ground up. Gamepads have a nice compactness and mobility. They're nice to hold, they don't lock your whole body into one place, and their inputs are all tailored specifically for the act of playing. Somehow, they can just feel more fun sometimes, and I think that's one of the reasons Platform gamesusually feel better with them.

There's one more category of game that is best played with a gamepad: games that should in theory work well with m+kb, but were nevertheless designed with a gamepad in mind.

Take the Assassin's Creed series: you'd think these games would work well with m+kb because they have few vehicles, slow-paced combat, and rudimentary stealth. Unfortunately, Ubisoft saddled these games (the earlier ones at least - haven't tried the newers ones) with bizarre mouse movement that [unsuccessfully] tries to mimic an analog joystick. As you move your mouse across the mousepad, the movement on screen decelerates until it stops completely...even though you are still moving your mouse. This deceleration is awkward and unintuitive, and no amount of tweaking of .ini files and the Windows control panel can entirely get rid of it. So, unless you want frustrating controls, play Assassins' Creed with a gamepad. Ditto with Watch_Dogs.

Another example is Skyrim. Now, Skyrim does usually play ok with m+kb, but once you play it with a gamepad it becomes clear this is how the game was originally conceived (though it's even better with the Xbox360 Controller KeyRemap mod).

In Skyrim, sneaking is of course better with analog movement, and so is lockpicking. Dual-wielding feels much more natural with two triggers in your hand, especially for melee brawlers. Finally, the UI was designed around a gamepad (though that is rectified by SkyUI). Even archery arguably feels better with a gamepad. Obviously, the accuracy is poorer than with a mouse. But it just feels more appropriate to pull back a bow string by pulling back on a trigger.

The final benefit of gamepads is their vibration ability. Well-designed vibration in a game makes a really nice impact. In some cases it helps with gameplay, as when it indicates that you're losing traction in a car game, or that you're nearing the sweet spot of a picked lock. In other cases, it just adds to immersion, as when a dragon flies over your head in Skyrim, or when you start shivering from the cold (requires Frostfall)

Things to look out for

To avoid compatibility and technical issues, the safest bet is a wired Xbox controller. Game forums are full of threads reporting problems with Logitech, PS3, and wireless xbox controllers.

The wired xbox 360 gamepad is good, except for its notoriously frustrating d-pad. Get the improved Xbox One gamepad instead (works with PC in wired mode), or a 3rd-party Xbox-compatible gamepad such as the Razer Sabertooth (pictured). I really like the Sabertooth, though be aware that you might need to do some one-off tweaking to get it to work properly.

Racing Wheel

The racing wheel is the epitome of the "find the right tool for the job" ethos. It has one job, and it performs it excellently. If you love racing games, you owe it to yourself to save up and get one. Though if don't love racing games but merely like them, then just use a gamepad.

Racing wheels have an analog brake and accelerator, and of course analog left-right movement. They also have vibration feedback, and a whole bunch of well-placed buttons. Technically then, they don't really do much that a gamepad doesn't already do!

But they just do it so much better. There's something about playing a good driving game with a wheel that just feels....unadulterated - in a way that shooting a gun by clicking a mouse (or scaling a wall by tilting a thumbstick) never will. It's a pure form of gaming that's about as good as it gets.

What they're not so good at

A full blown racing wheel can sometimes feel like overkill in light-hearted, over-the-top arcade racers such as Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, or in the intermittent driving in a GTA.

And obviously, a wheel ain't no good if a game don't got cars in it.

Where they excel

﻿Wheels are of course ideal for racing or driving games, especially those that leans towards the simulation side of the spectrum, whether an iRacing.com, a Shift 2, or a Dirt 3.

It'll surprise no one that steering a car is much more precise and satisfying with a wheel than with a 2cm thumbstick on a gamepad. But the same can be said for the pedals: I find it much more natural and easy to feather the pedals than I do a gamepad's triggers. Also, the mere fact that your feet are involved plays a huge role in making you really feel connected to the car, increasing immersion in the game.

The force feedback (that means vibration by the way - but a good wheel gives a much meaner kick than a gamepad does) is terrific too. Driving over gravel in Dirt 3 actually feels like driving over gravel. Even on tarmac, you can use the slight vibrations of the wheel to judge when you're beginning to lose traction.

What to look out for

Unfortunately, my primary advice when buying a racing wheel is to go absolutely as expensive as you're prepared to go, and then go even higher.

A good wheel is a bonafide piece of machinery. It must have size and heft, and its force feedback needs to kick like a mule. It's also going to cop a beating from you as you make those panicked last-second turns, so it needs to be strong, rigid, and grip your desk like a gorilla. A product like that is going to be expensive - there's just no other way around it.

I have a Logitech Driving Force GT, which cost around $250, and I wouldn't recommend anything cheaper than that. It's a good wheel, but it's a bit plasticky in parts, and it doesn't have a clutch or proper H-shaped stick shift. If I had to buy another one, I'd get a more expensive model, such as the G27 pictured above.

One thing to note about racing wheels is that they haven't got a defacto standard like gamepads have in the xbox 360 controller, so game support can sometimes be a bit hit or miss. You can almost always get things working satisfactorily with some tweaking and googling, but you can minimise your headaches by buying a recent model from a big brand.

Wheels can also occasionally interfere with gamepads, requiring you to unplug one to use the other.

Wacom tablet - Yes, Really

Believe it or not, the Wacom can be great for games. Well, 0.01% of the world's games, anyway.

A wacom is basically a drawing tablet with a pen that functions as a mouse. It makes freehand drawing about a gajillion times easier than with a mouse, and no self respecting illustrator or graphic designer would be caught dead without one.​Wacoms aren't stellar at replicating regular mouse use, They're passable for Web browsing but I'd never play a shooter with one. But they excel, predictably, at games that require pen-like finesse. They can also be good for games that were originally designed for touchscreens, since a pen is closer to a finger than a mouse is. Let's call these drawing games andtouch-based games.

So far, I've only played 2 games that the wacom excels at: Crayon Physics and Flight Control HD. Both are way more fun with a wacom than with a mouse.

My score on one of the levels in Flight Control HD is in the top 1% on the world leaderboards. I've never come remotely close to the top of the leaderboards in any other game. Clearly, my success this time was due to the advantage of using a wacom when most other chumps are using mice ;)

Unless you're the world's most ardent Flight Control HD aficionado, there's obviously little reason to go out and buy a wacom just for gaming. But if you're a designer or artist who happens to already use one, keep it in mind for those occasional games that might benefit from it!

PhysX cloth physics are used throughout Witcher 3, such as on the many flags on this battlefield.

If you've read my main PhysX article, you'll already know that a dedicated PhysX card is generally a good idea, frequently providing a 15-30% framerate boost, and reducing stuttering to boot. But how does it fare in Witcher 3?

Despite falling short of some expectations (I'm particularly disappointed by the environment texture quality), Witcher 3 is still without a doubt one of the best-looking games ever made. The detail is dense, the art design is magnificent, and there's an impressive amount of physics on display.

When it comes to hair, Witcher 3 is in a class of its own. Think Tomb Raider's TressFX but less showy, and applied more frequently. Geralt's hair is simply the most natural-looking hair you've ever seen in a game, and the fur on some of the creatures is just fantastic. Of course, all this hair (up to 125,000 strands on-screen at a time, apparently!) comes at a performance cost, and unfortunately, it doesn't use PhysX. Witcher 3's hair physics uses Nvidia HairWorks, which uses your main GPU only.

Witcher 3 doesn't use PhysX for hair, but it does use it for cloth and destruction effects. These effects are used on all platforms (consoles too), and are said to use the CPU. However, I can confirm that they do utilise my dedicated PhysX card.....though not much - the most I saw was about 9% usage.

Shut up and test

I went to areas where there were a lot of PhysX enabled objects (flags, banners, hanging herbs, etc.) and tested the framerate both while standing still, and while using the Aard sign to fling everything about. I then averaged the results below.

Without dedicated PhysX card: 50.1With dedicated PhysX card: 50.8

Yup. Not very impressive at all. I'll add that I don't think the 0.7fps is mere statistical noise. I really did notice a ~1 fps difference in most of the areas I tested in, especially when throwing Aard. But 1fps is 1fps, so who cares, right?

I'll also add a caveat: I'm not very far into the game. It's entirely possible that there are some areas I haven't seen that are much more demanding for PhysX (This happens very often in PhysX-enabled games). It's also entirely possible that with a levelled up Geralt who possess a much stronger Aard, I'd see much larger and more taxing destruction PhysX effects . So, while I'm not flipping somersaults about my 0.7fps increase, I am at least content to know that my PhysX card will be ready to absorb anything the game might throw at it later on.

So the upshot is this: Witcher 3 ain't no Metro: Last Light. If you already have a PhysX card, keep it in - who knows, it may save you the occasional minor slowdown. But if you don't, don't go buying one just for Witcher 3.

]]>Wed, 25 Feb 2015 01:41:57 GMThttp://www.volnapc.com/all-posts/what-to-do-when-open-with-doesnt-work-properly-in-the-windows-context-menu So, you want to tell Windows to always open certain filetypes with a certain program. You right-click on a file in Windows explorer, and hover over "Open-With...". A list of applications pops up, but the program you want isn't on there. So you select "Choose default program...". You get a popup with a list of "Recommended programs", but the program you want isn't there either.

You hit "Browse", and find the .exe of your program yourself. So far so good. Now you hit "Open". Everything seems to work......but wait - the program you supposedly selected doesn't actually appear in the list, and double-clicking the file still opens it using the previous default program. Huh?This happened to me when I tried to make Photoshop the default program for the file extensions JPG, PNG, or PSB. Have you had a similar problem? If so, I've got another question for you: the program you're trying to use - has it ever been updated or had its location changed? If so, you're probably in luck. Try the solution below.

Download a little utility called Open With View (scroll down to the Download OpenWithView link).

Extract the ZIP archive and run OpenWithView.exe

Look for your desired program in the left column (in my case it was Photoshop.exe)

Look over to the "Command Line" column and check the program location. Is it outdated or incorrect? (in my case it was C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC\Photoshop.exe, when it should have been C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC2014\Photoshop.exe)

Right-click the program and choose Disable selected items. Close the OpenWithView utility

You can now go back to Windows Explorer and try changing the "open with..." settings again, with the usual method. It should work now

Never miss a Volpost

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name *

Last Name

]]>Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:37:14 GMThttp://www.volnapc.com/all-posts/xbox-controller-users-get-rid-of-xboxstatexe I've already posted about this on my Razer Sabertooth article, but it deserves its own post.

If you're a PC gamer who uses an xbox 360 gamepad, you might unwittingly be running a program called Xboxstat.exe, which comes with the official xbox gamepad drivers, and launches itself at bootup. Unlike most background programs, this one consumes a lot of resources. On my system, it frequently hogged up to 13% of the CPU resources. And not just in idle, but even when my PC was working hard and really needed those resources. Others have reported it consuming 50% or even 90% of theirs!

Xboxstat.exe isn't required for the controller to work, and removing it makes no difference to gameplay. I don't know exactly what it does - I believe it collects statistical information about your games for Microsoft. Whatever its intended purpose, it's surely not important enough to warrant slowing down our PCs with massive CPU loads. Get rid of it using the method below.

Press the windows key, type msconfig.exe and press enter

Click the startup tab

Scroll down until you find Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories (in the Command column it will be something like C:\Program Files\Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories\Xboxstat.exe), then uncheck its box

Click ok

If a popup notifies you that you made changes, tell it not to remind you again, unless you want that annoying popup each time you boot up

After you next restart, Xboxstat.exe won't clog up your resources any more.

Never miss a Volpost

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name *

Last Name

]]>Thu, 05 Feb 2015 04:46:44 GMThttp://www.volnapc.com/all-posts/real-pc-gamers-use-gamepads I've wanted to write this post for a while. But first, let's get my PC gaming credentials out of the way: I'm an elitist, know-it-all, over-privileged member of the PC Gaming Master Race™. I haven't owned a console since 1983. My gaming rig has three GPUs, a meticulously overclocked CPU, and a somewhat embarrassing abundance of blue LEDs. When I recently quit my job to become an indie game developer it was, naturally, to make a PC game.

So yep, I've earned my PC gaming stripes. And I use a gamepad. And so should you.

If PC gaming is about anything, it's about power and customisation. Why is Skyrim 10 times better on PC than on console? Yes, resolution and framerate have something to do with it. But mostly it's because you can customise the bejeezus out of Skyrim with mods that greatly improve the graphics, audio, gameplay, UI, and add tons of new content.

One of my own upcoming Skyrim mods, Murals that don't suck™, designed to transform the standard Skyrim mural into something that's worthy of the PC.

PC gaming is about options. So when it comes to control input schemes, PC's greatest strength isn't the presence of a mouse and keyboard. It's the presence of more options than any other platform. On PC, as always, you get to choose the right tool for the job. So yes, real PC gamers use gamepads....and mice....and keyboards....and wheels..... and.....

Yep, I have a few gaming peripherals! I'll discuss each in detail in my next post.

I personally own a bunch of control peripherals, and I use all of them, depending on the game. In part 2 of this post I'll explore the question of "Which control peripherals are best suited to which games?". Check back next week, or sign up below to be automatically notified when the post is up.

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

When I was younger, my low-budget PC struggled to run most games, so I made it a habit to shut down any unused background programs, virus scanners, and services before every gaming session.

Nowadays, I'm older, have a real job, and am fortunate enough to be able to spend more money on my beloved hobby. With a high-end CPU and two high-end GPUs in SLI, I have the luxury of being able to just boot up a game, put all settings to max, turn on 3Dvision, and enjoy what is usually a smooth, sumptuous gaming experience. But I started wondering: was I hurting my performance by forsaking this old habit? Could I still get a noticeable boost by shutting off a few programs before I launch a game?

Conventional wisdom says that 'No, those days are over': today's CPUs are much better at multi-tasking, so leaving background programs running shouldn't impact gaming in any serious way. Still, I decided to find out for myself, if only for peace of mind.

Testing Methodolody

I tested 5 games, using their built-in benchmarks for accuracy. I did several runs in each test, and averaged the results. I first tested them with a bunch of background programs and processes running (see list below). Then, I disabled all of those background apps, and tested again. These were the background programs in question:

Evernote

MediaMonkey (idle)

Folding@Home (idle)

Google Chrome (system tray only)

xmouse

logitech gaming software

Fraps

fitbit connect

razer synapse 2.0

corsair vengeance mouse config

Aida64

Nvidia geforce experience

Microsoft Security Essentials (real-time protection turned on)

Display Fusion Pro

Google Drive

Thunderbolt Software

Epson Event Manager

Phew! Quite a list - and those are just my everyday startup programs! OK. below are the FPS results, both bef﻿or﻿e and ﻿﻿a﻿f﻿﻿te﻿r ﻿disabling all those background programs.

The FPS (frames-per-second) results are rounded to the nearest whole number, but the graph bars themselves shows the original un-rounded data. That's why you can see tiny differences between some of the bars, despite their respective FPS figures being the same.

As you can see, the difference is basically zilch. Certainly nothing meaningful. This is bad news for anyone who was hoping to pluck some extra performance by emptying their system tray. But personally, I'm relieved, as it means I won't ever feel compelled to go through that tiresome ritual of closing everything before each game session.

It might be argued that, because my PC is pretty high-end, it doesn't make a good test sample, and that closing background applications might have a more pronounced effect on low-end PCs. Perhaps - I can't promise otherwise - but I doubt it.

Remember: I stressed my PC by setting all settings to max, and in the case of Hitman and Metro, my PC was struggling to produce barely playable framerates. Yet there was still no significant difference between before and after.

Caveat

This is all well and good for programs that are robustly designed and behave as intended. But some programs are just stinkers, and take up way more resources than they should. Ferric in the comments mentions that Spotify has a large impact on their system.

Another culprit is ﻿xboxstat.exe﻿. It's a piece of official Microsoft software that comes with the xbox gamepad controller, but it is a horrible resource hog. Get rid of it. It is completely unnecessary for the gamepad to function properly, and it has been known to consume crazy amounts of resources. On my system, it regularly consumed 13% of CPU even when not idle. Others have reported it consuming as much as 90%! I've written a guide on how to safely remove it towards the bottom of my Razer Sabertooth article (but you don't need to own a Sabertooth to be affected - xboxstat.exe actually comes with the official Microsoft xbox gamepad driver).

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

So, you've decided to join the true PC Gaming Master Race and get 3Dvision. Nice one! Once you've experienced the exquisite immersion that comes from gaming in proper 3D, you'll find it hard to ever go back. But 3Dvision comes with a performance cost, and you're wondering how your PC will handle it. How much 3Dvision affects your FPS varies game by game, but there are some rules of thumb.

Putting the Rules of Thumb to the test

In 3Dvision, the GPU needs to pump out twice the frames as in 2D (one for each eye). Based on this, 3Dvision users sometimes make two claims:

Claim #1: Turning on 3Dvision in a game will generally halve the FPS

Claim #2: 3Dvision and SLI are a match made in heaven, since the former requires two [similar] frames per eye, and the latter gives you two [similar] GPUs with which to render them.

Intuitively, these claims sound fair enough, but I decided to do some testing and find out for sure.

I focused only on average framerates. I took note of maximum and minimum framerates too, but the story they told didn't deviate much from the one told by the average framerate results, so I left them out, for the sake of clarity

I did between 3 and 5 passes for each test, depending on how satisfied I was that I was getting a trustworthy sampling (for example, Mafia II is notoriously variable, and therefore requires a larger test sample than Tomb Raider, which tends to give almost the exact same results each time)

For the 2D tests, I disabled the 3Dvision driver completely (ie. I didn't merely press Ctrl-T)

How I present the results

I first present each game's FPS graph.

Then I collate the data from the FPS graph in two slightly different ways, and put those into a blue boxand a green box.

The blue box reveals how much of a benefit adding a second card (ie. SLI) made, both in a 2D scenario and a 3D scenario. This puts ﻿claim #2﻿to the test (is SLI really much more effective in 3D than it is in 2D?)

The green boxreveals how much of a performance drop I saw once 3Dvision was turned on. This puts claim #1 to the test (does 3D really halve the framerate compared to 2D?)

The results

OK, lets jump right into the test results.

Not bad! Even though SLI brings a pretty dismal 18% improvement in 2D*, SLI scaling is much better in 3D - more than three times better, in fact. Claim #2 is looking pretty good.

Meanwhile, claim #1 seems pretty much on the money, unfortunately. Turning on 3Dvision in a single-GPU environment gives us a whopping 45% decrease in FPS. Not quite a halving of framerate, but close. It's better in SLI, of course, and an SLI user who switched to 3Dvision would only suffer a 26% decrease in FPS - from 78 to 57 - despite the fact that the GPUs would be still be rendering twice as many frames.

* As I showed in a previous article, SLI users may actually get a higher FPS in Batman Arkham Origins by disabling SLI and devoting their second card to PhysX.

I tested Tomb Raider with all settings set to max, except for SSAA, which was set to x2 rather than x4.

Unfortunately, Tomb Raider tells us a different story to Arkham Origins. While SLI scaling is beautiful in 2D, it's not as impressive in 3D (ironically, since it's again 59%). The single-GPU performance cost is again about 50%.

Here, we see not much difference between SLI and single-GPU. By the way, please note that I used the Helixmod fix for Bioshock Infinite for this test. I did not use Nvidia's "3D compatibility mode", which may have a different performance impact.

Ok, let's see some more charts.

OK, a fairly varied bunch of results there. Mafia II was reminiscent of Arkham Origins, with paltry SLI scaling in 2D but a handsome improvement in 3D. In fact, SLI scaling was better in 3D in every game except Tomb Raider. But only two games (Sleeping Dogs and Metro: Last Light) really did justice to the "SLI and 3Dvision are a match made in heaven" maxim of ﻿claim #2﻿, with almost perfect SLI scaling in 3D (ie. almost a doubling of FPS).

Let's average it all out

OK, let's take the results of all 8 games, average them out, and see what we find:

Looking at the green box, we see that claim #1 is spot on: Switching to 3Dvision mode will tend to halve your framerate. This is mitigated somewhat with a second card, with 3Dvision's superior SLI usage narrowing the gap.

3Dvision's advantage in SLI is clear (47% vs 66%), though not as massive as ﻿claim #2﻿ would have you believe. More to the point, it's somewhat unpredictable. Sometimes it vastly outshines 2D SLI (eg. Batman, Metro, Mafia II), while other times it has only a modest improvement (eg. Hitman, Bioshock). And in at least in one case (Tomb Raider), 3D SLI distinctly underperformed compared to its 2D counterpart.

One thing all 8 tests agree on though, is that when gaming in 3Dvision, SLI will always be significantly worth it. While 2D SLI gave only a 18% improvement in Arkham Origins, and 4% in Mafia II, 3D SLI scored at least 49% in every single test. A match made in heaven? Well, maybe not quite. But a good match, for sure.

So, is 3Dvision worth it?

Yes, yes, and yes. 3D makes games come alive like you've never seen them before. Objects become more lifelike, spaces become more cavernous, and the gameworld feels less cramped; hidden details emerge, and immersion goes through the roof.

However you choose to deal with the performance cost - whether by lowering graphical settings, forking out for stronger hardware, or just putting up with lower framerates - it will be worth it, as it'll still look better in 3D than it ever did in 2D.

And as these tests indicate, for those 3Dvision users considering an upgrade, SLI may not be a panacea, but it's still clearly a great bang-for-buck prospect.

Dave Bleja

Dave is a graphics professional and longtime PC power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke.

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

The Razer Sabertooth game controller is based on the Xbox 360 gamepad, and is supposed to work out of the box as if it were a standard Xbox 360 gamepad. It doesn't always do this though. If Device Manager fails to recognise your Razer Sabertooth, follow the below steps. I'm using Windows 7 64bit. I'm not sure if this works on Windows 8 or other versions.

If the Sabertooth doesn't appear at all, make sure it's plugged into a USB port at the back of your PC, rather than the front of your case, in a USB hub, or via an extension cable.

click the Driver tab

Choose Update Driver

Choose Browse my computer for driver

Choose Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer

If there is a category called Windows Common Controller for Windows Class, choose that. Otherwise, choose Show All Devices

In the Manufacturer column, choose Microsoft

In the Model column, choose Xbox Controller for Windows (if there's more than one version, try the latest one first)

Hit next, and hit Yes on the Update Driver Warning popup

If all went well, a system tray balloon will now tell you that your device was installed, and the Sabertooth will light up. Done!

The next step is optional but recommended.

Getting rid of XboxStat.exe

The official Xbox driver package installs a program called Xboxstat.exe, which launches itself at bootup and runs in the background. But unlike most background programs, this one consumes a lot of resources. On my system, it frequently hogged 13% of the CPU resources (and not just in idle, either). Others have reported it consuming 50% or even 90% of theirs.

Xboxstat.exe isn't required for the controller to work. I don't know exactly what it does - I believe it collects statistical information about your games for Microsoft. Whatever it is, I highly doubt it's important enough to warrant slowing down our PCs. Get rid of it using the method below.

Press the windows key, type msconfig.exe and press enter

Click the startup tab

Scroll down until you find Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories (in the Command column it will be something like C:\Program Files\Microsoft Xbox 360 Accessories\Xboxstat.exe), then uncheck its box

Click ok

If a popup notifies you that you made changes, tell it not to remind you again, unless you want that annoying popup each time you boot up

After you next restart, Xboxstat.exe won't clog up your resources any more.

Dave Bleja

Dave is a graphics professional and longtime PC power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke.

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

I recently had an odd problem. I have Adobe Creative Suite 5 installed, as well as Photoshop CS6. Since Adobe Bridge comes installed with Photoshop, it also means that I now have two versions of Bridge installed: CS5 (CS5.1 actually) and CS6.My problem was that whenever I tried to run Bridge CS6, Bridge CS5 would open instead - even when I went to the Adobe Bridge CS6 source folder and double clicked bridge.exe.It turns out that there's an easy fix. The problem is that Bridge 5 is still loading itself into your memory when you start your PC. So, with its 'foot in the door' in your RAM, it automatically launches itself whenever you try to launch Bridge - even if you try to launch a different version.To solve the problem:

press the windows key

type msconfig and press enter

select the startup tab

scroll down until you find Adobe Bridge CS5 (or CS5.1 or whatever), then uncheck it

Click ok, and restart

That should solve it, as Bridge 5 should no longer load itself up on startup. If the problem persists however, try the following:

Once in a while, I load up my Windows 7 PC and, for some inexplicable reason, everything on the screen appears a bit too dim and grey (except for the mouse cursor, which remains bright white). The above image shows the problem, albeit somewhat exaggerated. It only happens rarely though, and restarting the PC usually makes it go away - though having to restart is frustrating.

Googling reveals that a lot of people get this problem, though few seem to know what the source is or how to fix it, and it took me a long time to find the solution. Though I finally did (at least, it works for me):

I still don't know why the problem exists, or why doing the above fixes it, but it seems to fix it every time.

Dave Bleja

Dave is a graphics professional and longtime PC power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke.

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.

If you draw or paint with a wacom tablet on Windows 7, you may have suffered through one of Microsoft's more puzzling punishments: those horrible little circles that hound your cursor and hamper your ability to draw smoothly. From what I gather, they're actually designed for touch-screen monitors, so it's frustrating that Microsoft forces them onto wacom users where they don't belong.

I found it surprisingly hard to find the solution to this issue online. Part of the problem is that there are two separate circles, each with a separate solution. Another part is that one of the solutions I frequently came across doesn't work on Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. The below solutions do.

Circle 1

This is the really annoying circle that appears not when you click but when you hold or drag your pen (it momentarily pauses your cursor, making smooth brushstrokes all but impossible). This is the circle that quickly forms itself in a clockwise motion as you hold the pen down, and sometimes goes bright blue when you release it. To get rid of it:

This fix should work on both Windows 7 and Windows 10​

Press the windows key

type "pen and touch" and press enter

In the window that appears, left-click the entry "Press and hold" and click "settings".

Uncheck "Enable press and hold for right-clicking".

Click OK on both windows to close them

Circle 2

This is the little ripple-like circle that appears whenever you click your pen. It doesn't hinder your drawing/painting as severely as the other circle does, but it's still distracting. To get rid of it:

Windows 7 solution:

If you don't have a mouse plugged in, you might want to do the final step first

Press the windows key

type "computer management" and press enter

In the window that opens, Double click "Services and Applications" in the centre column

Double click "Services" in the centre column

Scroll down and double click "Tablet PC Input Service"

Find the "Startup type:" dropdown box and change it to "Disabled".

Click OK, then close the Computer Management window

Restart your PC

After your PC loads up again, one of two things should happen: either your tablet works happily and circle-free, or it doesn't work at all. If it doesn't work at all, you now need to download and install the proper driver for it (to replace the Microsoft one that you just disabled). If you use a wacom, you can find the driver for your tablet here.

Windows 10 solution:

press windows key

type "settings" and hit enter

click on "devices"

Select "Pen" from the left column (if it's not there, first install the wacom driver for your tablet)

Turn "Show Visual Effects" off

Close the settings dialog

​

Different version of Windows 7?

These methods work for most users, though a few still seem to have problems. Also, it's possible that you'll get rid of the circles in Photoshop but still see them in the Windows desktop.

An alternate method to try, especially if you don't have the Home Edition of Windows 7, is this:

Double click Turn off pen feedback and select Enabled to enable the filter that turns off the rippled circle.

​​

The alternative "Windows Ink" method

Notmare in the comments has pointed out another method, which is to uncheck "use Windows ink" in the Wacom Control Panel. This option was made by Wacom specifically to circumvent these annoying Windows issues. This is certainly worth trying, since it's such a simple solution.

However, please note that some users have reported pen-pressure problems when this option is combined with Photoshop CC. Leaving "use Windows ink" turned on allows Photoshop to use the native Windows API, which Adobe claim 'gives better stroke results and improves the out of the box experience'.

Feeling grateful?

Spryke is the story of a deep sea cyberfish who discovers the joys of dry land!

Please help me out and support Spryke's Kickstarter campaign by pledging and/or telling your friends about it :)

Dave Bleja

Dave is a graphics professional and longtime PC power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke, an intricately crafted platform game for PC. It'sawesome, and you should totally go and check it out.

Never miss a post

Whether it's the littered newspapers that gracefully catch the wind under Batman's feet in the Arkham games, chunks of wall crumbling under gunfire in Metro: Last Light, or the technicolor mayhem of a singularity grenade in Borderlands 2, PhysX can add a great deal of dynamism to a game. Unfortunately, it usually comes with a substantial (and often underestimated) performance cost - not just in the form of a FPS hit, but also microstuttering or downright freezes.

We can counteract this performance penalty by dedicating a secondary video card exclusively to PhysX, but how much does it actually help? I've long known the benefits of a dedicated PhysX card from personal experience, but until now I'd never tested them systematically.

PhysX debris inBatman: Arkham City

Testing Setup

I recently bought a GTX 650 to use as a PhysX card in my GTX Titan SLI setup:

My GTX 650 on PhysX duties. The small length of the 650 allows unrestricted airflow to the Titans surrounding it.

I tested several PhysX-heavy games, using built-in benchmarks for better data consistency

To minimise margin of error, I ran each benchmark several times and averaged the results

I tested the effect of a dedicated PhysX card on both an SLI system (two GTX Titans; results in orange) and a non-SLI system (one GTX Titan; results in blue)

The Results

Passion Leads ArmyPassion Leads Army is a Chinese multiplayer shooter that utilises a bunch of dx11 and PhysX effects. I did four runs of its benchmark utility in each of the four configurations.

The verdict here is crystal clear: Adding a PhysX card helps significantly, increasing the average framerate by 18%, and the maximum framerate by a whopping 48%.

Let's pause and reflect on what this means. In one scenario, the PhysX was being rendered by a humble, budget-oriented GTX 650. In the other scenario, the PhysX was being rendered by two Titans.........and the Titans lost.

Clearly, PhysX is best taken out of the main GPU pipeline. Yes, the Titans can handle PhysX on their own, but they do even better when they can concentrate on their main tasks, while a lowly but capable helper quietly tackles the PhysX off to the side.

Cryostasis

Cryostasisis a notoriously demanding game that would frequently cause a stutter-thon on even high-end systems. How much this is due to the complexity of its PhysX effects (which were very impressive back in 2009 and still look good today) and how much is merely due to poor optimisation (overall, the game isn't particularly pretty and is set mainly in small enclosed areas with few NPCs) is up for debate. Either way, it's a perfect benchmark for our purposes.

Not much action in the minimum framerates, and only SLI received a meaningful boost in the maximum framerates. But our PhysX card provided a significant improvement to the average framerates in all tests.

So, it's a modest improvement (somewhat surprisingly, given how much of a bottleneck PhysX can be in this game). But the verdict is clear: adding a PhysX card undoubtedly improves performance is Cryostasis.

Mafia II

Overall, the Mafia II benchmark doesn't look particularly impressive by today's standards; the characters are wooden and the lighting and geometry seems a little simple. The main thing that stands out is the dynamic PhysX behaviour, which looked great in 2010, and still looks decent today.

Overall, the PhysX card has improved the performance, yet it seems to have actually hindered it slightly when it comes to the max framerate (in SLI, that is).This time around, the victory is not pure. But it is still most certainly a victory: maximum framerate means little, since average framerate is where you spend the vast majority of your time. It could be argued that the most important figure is actually minimum framerate, since this represents the lags and framerate drops that you notice most of all, and which can hinder the gameplay and cause loss of immersion.

Metro: Last LightNow for one of the most demanding games of recent times, which makes use of lots of bells and whistles, as well as considerable use of PhysX.

As with Mafia II, we see a slight decrease in max framerate in SLI, despite an overall increase in performance (albeit a small one). Of our benchmarks thus far, this is possibly the least impressive result for the dedicated PhysX card, right?Actually, not at all - at least not in SLI. Take a look at the following graphs, supplied by the Metro Last Light benchmark itself. They each show a single run, and look much the same as the graphs of the many other test runs I did.

Please note : the reddish portion of the graphs is just the background; the actual data is shown by the jagged black area, which is actually just a single line. This line purports to represent FPS (Frame per Second), but actually shows much more detail than that - tiny fractions of a second. As the black line makes its way across the graph it jumps up and down, plotting so many points at such a high density that it appears to be one large, solid mass (especially in SLI).

The first thing you'll notice is the much thicker black lines on the SLI systems, revealing a much greater rate of framerate variability (ie. less smooth framerate). That's the downside of multi-GPU setups, unfortunately, and it seems particularly pronounced in Metro Last Light.

But beyond that, notice the large difference in the black line of both graphs once you introduce a PhysX card, especially in SLI. Without a PhysX card, the line jumps wildly all over the place, routinely making leaps of 50 fps or more in a single split second. With an added PhysX card, the graph has the same general shape - the same peaks and troughs - but with much less variation. Though the overall FPS is actually pretty similar, it's a much smoother ride.

I can confirm that this was very noticeable when watching the actual benchmarks. Without a PhysX card, the benchmark was so full of microstuttering I found it somewhat frustrating to watch. With a PhysX card, it was much better. Though still not perfect, the stutters were much less frequent, especially in the latter, more PhysX-intensive half of the benchmark.

The results are more of a mixed bag in single-GPU mode, which already has a much thinner line (less variability) than the SLI system. On the whole, adding a PhysX card significantly thins the black line out, improving framerate consistency. But, unfortunately, it also adds more occasional spikes and dips. Still, I'd call this a win for the PhysX card, given the significant average fps improvement, and thinner line overall.

Batman: Arkham Origins

The Batman: Arkham games have always made impressive use of PhysX, using them not just for splashy tricks, but to subtly enrich the general atmosphere of the gameworld. Origin stakes these a notch up, with dynamic snow, steam and fog that reacts to the player. Let's see how our dedicated GTX 650 holds up.

Well, that's disappointing. The PhysX card greatly increased the max framerates, but that means nothing, since both the minimum and average framerates were worse.

It seems that the disparity between the 650 and the Titan is just too great, with the humble 650 unable to contribute anything that a Titan can't already do better on its own. Batman: Arkham Origins is, at time of writing, the latest PhysX game on the market, and uses complex dynamic snow and turbulence effects that aren't often seen in other games.

Perhaps the baseline of GPU grunt required by these effects proved too much for the 650. But could a PhysX card have helped if the disparity between the cards was smaller? To test this, I disabled SLI and instead dedicated one of my Titans to PhysX. These new results are shown in red below.

Wow. With a Titan taken off SLI duties and devoted to PhysX, the performance went through the roof. Not so much in the max framerate department, strangely, but who cares - the minimum and average fps is way up (by 60% and 42%, respectively).

This is perhaps unsurprising, given how poor the SLI scaling is. That second Titan was barely adding anything in SLI mode, but once switched to PhysX mode, it was set free to do some actual heavy lifting. And judging by the massive fps improvement, the PhysX in this game is heavy lifting indeed.

So, we've learnt that a PhysX card can make a massive difference in Batman: Arkham Origins. But we've also learnt that a GTX 650 is too weak to be of much help to a GTX Titan. A scenario with a smaller gap between cards would surely perform more desirably. For example, a GTX 670 & GTX 650 combination would probably work well, and something like a GTX Titan & GTX 680 combination probably would also.

So, is a dedicated PhysX card worth it?

Surely, the answer is a resounding "Yes!".It makes a substantial difference to some of the most demanding games, is easy, and is relatively cheap (I bought my GTX 650 for just over a hundred bucks - a mere fraction of the small fortune I spent on my Titans!)

Despite PLA's massive framerate improvement, I actually consider the Metro: Last Light results to be the most exciting, as an SLI user. With a PhysX card, I found myself getting immersed in the action as if I was watching a movie, whereas previously, it had felt like watching a tech demo that was straining under its own weight.

Whether it's an old card from a previous upgrade cycle, or a new one that you've bought specially for the purpose, a dedicated PhysX card seems a very worthwhile upgrade to me.

Who should get a dedicated PhysX card?

Honestly, I think almost anyone with an Nvidia GPU would benefit. If you've got an older card left over from an upgrade, it's a no-brainer: keep it for PhysX. Even if you don't, it may well be worth it buying a new card specially for PhysX: this may well be one of the more economical upgrades available, as you can get a significant difference from a comparatively cheap piece of hardware. Sure, it'll only help in certain games, but the same could be said for a CPU upgrade, yet that doesn't seem to stop most people.

High-end users

As my results show, a PhysX card can be of great value to a high-end rig. Even adding a budget card to a high-end setup helped significantly in 4 out of 5 tests (and adding a stronger card would surely give you great results in 5 out of 5).

SLI users

Those who already have 2 cards in SLI and are thirsty for more performance would be wise to consider a PhysX card before they consider going 3- or 4-way SLI, as it can make a large difference and, at least in Metro: Last Light, greatly reduce microstuttering. In fact, as Batman: Arkham Origins has shown us, in some cases those users would be better off switching one of their existing cards to PhysX.

Low- and mid-range users

After adding the GTX 650 to my system, I've been very pleased. But the results may well be even more impressive for people with mid- or low-end rigs. If a midrange GTX 650 can shine next to the two behemoths that are GTX Titan SLI (in 4 of 5 games at least), how much brighter would it shine next to, say, a GTX 670?

And for that matter, you won't need a GTX 650 to get nice results. A GT 630, GTX 470, or GTX 260 would probably all do just fine too. At least in 4 out of 5 of our tests, the main benefit of a dedicated PhysX card comes not from the heaping more brute power into your system. The mere act of removing the PhysX pipeline from your main card(s) seems to be what makes a substantial difference most of the time.

Caveats

The whole thing is clearly moot if you rarely actually play PhysX games.

PhysX is not going anywhere soon, and is used in some great games, from both AAA and smaller developers. Still, only a minority of games utilise the tech, and most of those tend to be shooters or 'action games'. Few racing, RPG, or strategy games use it. Only you know how relevant PhysX is to your gaming experience.

Personally, I've found it to be well worth it, as some really great games use it, and to spectacular effect. Furthermore, PhysX often appears in very high-end games that use plenty of other advanced features, in which case you want to give your PC all the help it can get.

Not everyone's motherboard and/or power supply will support an additional graphics card.

Before you get a dedicated PhysX card, make sure your motherboard can handle another card. On many motherboards, a second graphics card will lower the PCIe speed from x16 to x8 per card. By most accounts, that's fine and presents a minimal difference. Some motherboards may actually accept a second card, but will downgrade the PCIe slots to x4 speed, which is said to be a much more significant drop.

Even though PhysX is different from SLI, it's handy to look at the SLI capabilities of your motherboard. SLI doesn't officially support speeds as low as x4, so if your motherboard officially supports SLI, you'll be good to go.In my case, my PhysX card was my third card, so I had to upgrade to a motherboard that officially supported three-way SLI.

Also, make sure your power supply can handle an extra graphics card. Chances are that it can, but use an online PSU calculator to check just in case.

Noise, Heat, and Space

Even if your system can handle an extra card, make sure that adding one won't be too much of a burden on the rest of your case. You can see in the photo higher up that I chose a low-profile card that wouldn't block the intake fan of my Titans (The Titans have a fan on their underside towards the right of the card - ie. under the green "GTX").

If I had used another full-width card for PhysX, it would have somewhat impeded the uppermost Titan's ability to cool itself, which would have prompted the Titan's fan to spin louder, and possibly also to throttle as it got too hot.

The most powerful low-profile card I could find was the EVGA GTX 650. To my dismay though, it is LOOOUD. I don't know if it's all 650s, or just the Evga one, but it was way louder than both the Titans combined, and was unreasonably noisy even at idle. In the end, I disabled its fan entirely and used some workarounds to compensate. Moral of the story: do your research when you buy a card, and consider the noise, heat, and space issues, and not just fps performance.

---Update---

Since writing this blog, I replaced my EVGA GTX 650 with a Zotac GTX 650ti, which is still a modestly-priced card, but brings a decent improvement over the GTX 650 (more so than its name would imply). The card is nice and quiet - barely audible on idle, and very reasonable at load. It does noticeably better in the Arkham Origins benchmark than the 650, but still didn't quite outperform regular SLI.

Having said that, I left the 650ti enabled during an entire playthrough of Arkham Origins, and the performance was great. I had the game totally maxxed at 1080p in 3Dvision, and very rarely dipped between 60fps (which in 3Dvision is actually 120fps). The few dips that did occur never felt like they were the result of PhysX. Flooding the scene with all sorts of smoke, fog and debris never appeared to dent the framerate, and my 650ti never seemed to go above 80% usage.

Summing it all up: Pros and Cons

Pros of getting a dedicated PhysX card

Helps address what is frequently one of the greatest bottlenecks in gaming performance (PhysX)

Will likely raise your frames per second

Can reduce or eliminate stuttering or freezing

Can give a performance boost to games that need it most (PhysX is often found in high-end games that use plenty of other demanding features, such as the Arkham and Metro series)

Can be acomparatively cheap upgrade, or even free (if using an old card from a previous build)

Can be a quick and easy upgrade (unlike, say, upgrading your motherboard, cooling, OS, or overclocking)

Cons of getting a dedicated PhysX card

Only works on a minority of games

PhysX tends to be used in only 2 or 3 genres of games

May require a motherboard upgrade, which becomes costly and time-consuming

May require a PSU upgrade, if your current PSU can't handle another card

Will require installing another graphics card close or adjacent to your existing card(s), which may contribute to noise, heat, and space issues

Only you know if installing a dedicated PhysX card is right for you. But as you can see from the various charts above, the performance benefits are significant. I wholeheartedly recommend considering one as part of your next upgrade.

I first experienced the benefit of a dedicated PhysX card a couple of years ago when I added a GTX 580 to my GTX 680. Among other things, this transformed Alice: Madness Returns (with PhysX on "high") from an unplayable freeze-a-thon to a silky 60fps. I thought I'd no longer need dedicated PhysX with Titan SLI, but then I noticed frequent PhysX-based stuttering in Metro: Last Light.

After seeing the results of my testing, I'm convinced for good. As long as PhysX continues to be used in games, and as long as it continues to look so awesome, a dedicated PhysX graphics card will remain staple in my upgrade cycle.

Feeling generous?

Was this article useful to you? Wish there was some way you could show your gratitude? Well, I'm glad you asked! As it happens, you're in luck!

My gorgeous 2D platformer Spryke needs your help to meet its Kickstarter goal! My team and I are aiming to make Spryke one of the remarkable platformers of this generation. At already looks, sounds, and plays fantastic - now we need your help to get it to the finish line!

Spryke is a fast-paced platformer about a cyberfish who discovers the joys of dry land!

Dave is a longtime PC gamer and power-user. He spends more on his gaming rig than a reasonable person should. He founded the indie game studio Volnaiskra, and is the creative force behind Spryke, a beautiful, skill-based platformer for PC. It's awesome, and you should totally go and check it out.

Never miss a post

I write useful posts about PC tweaks, graphics, and game design. I'll never spam you.